Ep. 354 - Building One of the Largest Crypto Exchanges in History, w/ BitFlyer's Joel Edgerton

In this episode of CRYPTO 101, brought to you by pNetwork and pTokens (PNT), we got to know Joel Edgerton, the COO of the BitFlyer US exchange. BitFlyer is one of the largest crypto exchanges in Japan, and Joel worked overseas with them for a very long time before being tapped as the man to lead the expansion into the US and navigate the choppy waters here in North America.

Joel shares with us a wealth of knowledge from his travels all over the world, living in Japan for over a decade, experience working with Fortune 100 companies before BitFlyer, and a very interesting perspective on how decisions are made at crypto exchanges. We got to learn about critical things that we don’t really even know about as regular traders, things like shared liquidity and how distributed order books work. He taught us about BitFlyer’s unique order types that make it a better and easier place to trade.

Joel shared his views on the DeFi boom, and at the end of the conversation, it was clear that not all exchanges are created equal. BitFlyer has the vision to really take some market share away from the early incumbents in the US crypto industry. You can be the first in your private group to get the edge of using their platform to place smarter orders.

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Episode Transcript

Bryce: All right, everybody. Welcome back to another awesome episode of the Crypto 101 podcast where we speak to founders, CEOs and the smartest people building up the Bitcoin, blockchain and crypto industry. Today’s episode is brought to you by our sponsor, pTokens, and pNetwork. And if you’ve been listening to crypto 101, for any amount of time, you’ve heard us call 2020, the year of interoperability over and over again, we’re talking about this concept. And that’s because the smartest teams in crypto are all focused on bridging the divide between the many different cryptocurrencies.

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Before we dive in to our awesome, awesome guest and conversation today, I want to remind you guys have two things. And then the first one is that if you go to crypto101insider.com, you can join our private community. Here’s where we have our model portfolio and all of our top picks. We also have crypto 101 University, where we have hours and hours and hours of written and video content that explains blockchain and explains cryptocurrency in a very bite sized and easy to understand way. And we have a weekly newsletter that goes out in quarterly state of crypto addresses that go out there’s just a ton of value packed into this every which way. So I want you guys first go to crypto101insider.com today, if you haven’t already. I also want to remind you guys that pizza mind and I recently just finished a book. It took 11 months of our lives to write and we’re calling it Crypto Revolution: Your Guide to the Future of Money.

We walk you through this fascinating world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain and it’s part history book, it’s part instructional guide, and it’s going to really show you guys why cryptocurrencies are globally disruptive and how they’re going to actually change in real life. And in real terms, the way that we buy and sell and even live. We include a bunch of how-tos on getting started with your first exchanges. We give you tips on how to safely buy and sell in store cryptocurrencies, as well as how do we evaluate potentially good cryptocurrencies. And the best part of the books that we’re giving it away for free? All you have to do is pay for shipping and handling. So go to cryptorevolution.com and pick up your copy today.

Bryce: All right, what’s up everybody? Bryce and Pizza Mind coming at you again with another episode of Crypto 101 podcast and today, we’re going to have a pretty interesting discussion. I think they’re all pretty interesting, but this one is going to focus a lot on Japan. It’s going to focus a lot on exchanges and some of the challenges there are with that. And what’s it like to build, well, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. So Pete’s before we get into that, brother, give me some updates on your life. What’s going on in your corner of San Diego?

Aaron: Well, in San Diego, everything’s pretty good over here. Probably the best place on the West Coast right now to deal with all the smoke and fires. Not too shabby. So even when the world’s burning San Diego’s still stay in sunny.

Bryce: Yeah, I agree. You know, I’m over on the other corner of San Diego on the opposite corner from you. But I would say the experience is pretty similar. But today, we’re joined by the CEO of bitFlyer. Awesome, huge exchange. Joel Edgerton, you’re up in San Francisco, right. Is that currently? Okay? How is it over there? I heard it’s like Red October. Are you okay?

Joel: Yeah, it doesn’t look like mortared outside anymore, but it’s actually pretty good. It’s not smoky anymore, but the last few days, pretty well. Yeah.

Bryce: Yeah, I saw a bunch of friends posting some pretty crazy pictures. So, definitely our thoughts are going up to you guys, but let’s dive into some capital market stuff. When we first met you, you were telling me a little bit about your background and you’ve basically touched every kind of vertical within finance. You’ve been in insurance. You’ve been in custodianship and brokerages. Tell us a little bit about you know, each of these things, each of these aspects and like how you kind of found yourself in crypto, like what your key learnings from your entire background were?

Joel: Sure, Sure. You’re making me sound really old though.

Bryce: Yeah, experienced, experienced. I think. I think it’s, I think it’s always like, you know, super important to set that tone like qualify yourself. I mean, you know, people are listening. There’s a million podcasts outside. So we want to get to know you before we might tune out, right.

Joel: So actually, I’ve done I’ve worked on the IT side and on the finance side. So I actually started at IBM, did a lot of work at IBM, and then got the Masters in finance. I’ve worked in Tokyo, I’ve worked in London, I’ve done capital markets. I’ve done custodian and trust work with State Street, I’ve worked with Citigroup on asset management side, I’ve worked with BNP Paribas, which is one of the largest European banks and capital markets and an insurance. So a lot of different things. And all of them I have to use in crypto, might have to use crypto. So crypto is the future, it’s going to replace a lot of stuff that’s in traditional finance. A lot of waste in traditional finance, blockchain addresses a lot of those issues. So I think it’s very exciting stuff. And it’s good to kind of have that traditional finance background. Because there’s not a lot of infrastructure, there’s not a lot of experience, processes in crypto are not so great. So being able to take what’s considered normal, and bring it over and help our customers and reduce risks and make it easier for newbies to get in, I think is important.

Aaron: So a guy with your background could literally work for anyone in the world. But you chose bitFlyer and you chose crypto. What was it about this industry and that company that said this is the place I want to be?

Joel: Well, that’s a great question. So like I said, I worked in Tokyo, my wife is Japanese. I’ve lived in Japan for about 12 years off and on. So I knew bitFlyer already. And bitflyer is huge in Japan is the number one cryptocurrency company in Japan. They’ve already got links into, you know, electronics companies, you can go and buy electronics with Bitcoin because they already have links that links into the largest bookseller in Japan and their loyalty program. So it’s pretty well integrated into Japan. In Japan itself, the government has taken a lot of efforts to bring order to the chaos that is crypto. So they have one way of looking at crypto, one way of regulating crypto, unlike in the US where it’s still 50 different states and how they handle things, which is a bit chaotic. So I was interested in bitFlyer, one because they’re well established brand, two, because I’m interested in Japan and speaking to Japanese. But to be real, I’ve been following crypto for a long time. And it’s just really exciting and fun stuff. And to be you know, in I think this is still very, very early days for crypto and to be able to help build that is just fine.

Bryce: Tell me a little bit about you know, just broadly speaking, before we kind of dive into the specifics about you know, running a crypto exchange, but just you know, working with people from Japan, is the work culture similar. Is it different? And what are some of those?

Joel: Yeah, there are definitely differences. Definitely differences, I think you’ll find Japan tends to be quite risk averse. Alright, so the things that you may see with unregulated exchanges a particular lot of the Chinese exchanges, the Japanese are not willing to take those risks. You know, in the English, we have the expression that the customer is king, and in Japan the expression is that the customer’s God, right? And you don’t want to piss off a god.

Bryce: Yeah, I like that.

Joel: That’s the way it is. So they will really carefully think about what’s going to be the impact on this on a customer. There may be money to be made. But if it puts the relationship with the customer at risk, they won’t do it, right. And I think that’s important. I think if we really want to build a long lasting structure of crypto if we really want to, you know, take over the traditional finance and get the efficiencies in there, you know, the real savings and time savings, we have to, you know, think about the customer. And we have to think about, you know, not just the innovation side, but you know, solving real problems.

Bryce: Absolutely. And speaking of innovations, just to kind of jump in, you know, before we were talking, you said, there’s a lot of developments that you guys have on the roadmap here for bitFlyer, within the next couple of years, I’d love for you to walk us through kind of what that roadmap looks like, maybe the top three, and then some of the challenges that are that are unique to each of those.

Joel: Right, I think the first thing we have to do is we have to build a better customer experience, right? In general, we, you know, there’s a lot of complaints about banks and the customer experience, but I think in cases it still can be better than what’s in crypto. You know, in banking, you can get access to your money immediately in crypto, usually; you’re not going to get immediate access to your money. So how can we make these things easier for our customers to get into the crypto world and be comfortable with the crypto world? Another area that we’re looking at is interest rates and yield, right, a very simple thing in common banking, but difficult in crypto. So you have you know, staking that’s originally there. And now you got some of the experiments and DeFy going on with, you know, Uniswap, and SushiSwap and all the other food swaps that are out there.

But it’s quite interesting this stuff that they’re doing. But the idea is that they’re taking our traditional finance ideas. And they’re just codifying them with Ethereum and smart contracts. And that makes it you know, quite interesting, because it’s not a world based on trust, which is what banking is based on. It’s a world based on code. And you just trust the code and the transparency of the code. So how do we bring that to customers in a safe way? It’s one of the major issues that we’ve got, because code can act.

Bryce: Can we dive into that? Just as we’re there? Pizza, I mean, you’ve been doing a really, really big deep dive in DeFy recently, and Joel, you know, do you think that what DeFy is doing, you know, it has merit? Maybe it’s a little too early or they’re going at it from too much of an aggressive angle? And? Or do you think CFY right, that whole new, the mean CFY decentralized Finance? Are you guys trying to keep that decentralized and non custodial ethos with any of the lending stuff that you guys are working on? Are you keeping that kind of centralized model?

Joel: Right now, we’re mainly looking at the centralized model, like I said, we tend to be quite risk averse, and, you know, the DeFy lending world, I mean, it’s hard to call it lending, it’s really more interest, or interest rate protocols than lending protocols. But it’s interesting stuff. But, you know, there’s way too much risk in it at this point. I mean, there’s stuff where, you know, they’re taking Frankenstein code from one project and another Frankenstein code for another pocket together, and it’s adding great value, but it’s, it’s very Darwinian. Their stuff that’s going to come up overnight, it’ll add lots of value, explode, and then it will explode, and just disappear. And that’s not the environment that we want our customers to be in. So I think our overall strategy is to be kind of a fast follower here. So, you know, allow that experimentation, allow that innovation, see what stands kind of a test of time, what’s really going to add value to our customers, and then take that and then implement and scale it.

Aaron: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It’s definitely a dangerous world out there. And a lot of these DeFy devs never had to work in customer service, or worried about the business end of things. They don’t treat your customers like God, they treat them like dirt and dump their bags on them. So they can make, you know, $10 million for one week of copying and pasting code. So well depth, but I definitely think there is a future despite the dark beginnings, you know, the light has to come out of the dark. So I think there is going to be something with this yield farming that could potentially be a staple of finance, just like holding or trading or derivatives. It’s essentially just a different type of arbitrage. Well, it’s too hard to do arbitrage in spot trading. But this at least in its early days, could be very interesting. Tell, so what are some of the, I think if you could really do anything, you know, ignore the risk, ignore the regulations. You know, we of course, you’ll do that for real, but in a dream world, what’s one feature that you could put on bitFlyer that you just personally think would be super cool.

Joel: Wow, that’s the first time somebody asked me that question. Why they pay peace? The big bucks?

Aaron: I get paid in food?

Joel: I’ll send you a pizza later on. That’d be cool. I think what I really like to be able to see is for there to be kind of this cross platform integration between the different projects and traditional finance, right? I think the merging of these worlds will happen, right. And right now, crypto is still very separate world. But it’s when the technological advances of crypto come in to the experience and the processes of traditional finance, where we’re really going to have some amazing stuff. And I think that the real advantage of crypto in the ethos of crypto is kind of that separation of state and money, right? There’s a lot of questions about that. And you see, you know, trillions of dollars being printed it, you know, you have to think, okay, there’s going to be inflation. And you know, if you’re an older person, and you’ve got a fixed income, that inflation is really going to hurt you. The prices are going to go up and your life is really going to deteriorate as far as your purchasing power, and you have no control over that, right, that’s somebody else that’s controlling that, by having that type of innovation, where you can control your own finances, you can make your own investments, right, I think is very powerful. So the what I really like to see is to have that interoperability between what we have in the crypto world and what we have, and traditional finance and eliminate a lot of this, this artificial walls that traditional finance is putting up because they simply don’t understand it.

Aaron: I think that’s a beautiful, beautiful dream to have. And unfortunately, I feel like we couldn’t be further away from that. On this day, there was a news article about many boobs in the European finance ministry offices from Germany to France, talking about banning stable coins and saying the European Central Bank should be the only bank that should be allowed to distribute a currency. But if this is a capitalist economy and a free market, and if the only way they can win is to make it illegal to have any competition. I don’t think this is going to last very long. So let me follow up. Will there still be traditional finance at all? And for how much longer?

Joel: Traditional finance has been around for 1000s of years. I don’t think it’s going to go away. I think it will adjust, right. When there’s money to be made, finance will do it. So you know, right now there’s the automatic reaction to you know, it’s going to cannibalize my existing business, I’m going to lose what I currently have. And there will be that reaction. But there are already tons of hedge funds and tons of institutional investors already in the crypto world, right? Those guys are the risk takers. They’re the first adopters. They’re already there.

And now you’ve got banks starting to become comfortable with it, you’ve got the OCC, the head of the OCC now, basically saying banks can custodian crypto in the US, right, it’s already happened. But you know, it’s not going to move that fast. I think we’re talking decades, right? For it to really get in place. But it’s already happened. And I don’t think it can be stopped. And I think the idea that, you know, bank, the government are going to try to regulate this space and eliminate it cannot happen, they will regulate the space. And they will have reasons to because there’s risk in there. But I don’t think they can eliminate it. The threat to the power that they have is real and the genies already out.

Bryce: Yeah, it’s funny. I was reading an article today from CoinDesk. And they said that there’s going to be some new regulatory framework for kind of unifying these 48 states, the 48 continental United States here about how they’re going to regulate money service businesses in regards to handling crypto is I know, this is all very new, and I didn’t give you a heads up, but do you know anything about what’s going on there?

Joel: Yeah, actually, I read that article. So let me kind of explain how it really happens today and then why this actually is a benefit. So we are regulated and each state individually. Each state can send an auditor into our office and ask whatever questions they want, right based on the license that we have. So we have, you know, say Arkansas coming in, Alabama coming in, North Carolina coming in, Texas coming in and we have to be prepared to answer all of their questions, right? So imagine just doing that for like 50 states, right?

Bryce: It’s quite a draw on your resources.

Joel: It’s a lot of work. I mean, and the documents are massive, I mean, you’re talking 1000s of pages of documents that could possibly be looked at. And, but they’re only want to look at their particular state customers. Right, so then you have to segment everything out, and it can be quite painful. So this new agreement is basically just saying, okay, instead of having all 50 states come in, whenever they want, the states are going to coordinate with each other, they’ll pick kind of a few regulators that are kind of responsible for this institution, and they will come in together as a group, and then they will share the information and their findings with the rest of the states.

Bryce: So that’s one of these things that is almost like, probably going to increase in quicken the pace here of innovation, because you guys are going to have your resources freed up to not have to answer every beck and call of every state regulated, rather, has to be, you know, put the onus on the states, right. But the onus on the states to have them coordinate, whatever they want to do, and then come at you guys with one request, I think that’s a pretty, you know, nice capitalistic approach that, that the government has taken .

Joel: I mean, the states have done this before I mean, if you look at the Uniform Commercial Code, right, that’s when the states have coordinated between themselves to kind of set the rules for commerce across states, where the federal government didn’t step in. So it’s a step forward, but what we really need is one set of rules. So the states still have different sets of rules, right? All they’re coordinating the audit, the rules are still different by state. And if a state wants to come in and do an individual audit, they still can. So we need one set of rules.

And that’s one of the advantages we have in Japan is there is one set of rules, right? We know what we need to do to build our business. While in the US, we have to go and talk to 50 different regulators to run something. And if we run out of product, maybe, you know, we can only offer it in 40 states in 10 states, we can’t do it, you know, you constantly have to kind of turn on and off products by state, which is really painful.

Aaron: That is extremely painful. So that brings me to another part of that whole topic. And that’s listing tokens on your exchange, what is the process for choosing a new token to get listed? I mean, do you have to check what the rules are in all 48 states? Or is it simply just good enough to pass the Howey test?

Joel: To be honest, it’s not clear, it’s not clear how that’s done. What we tend to do is focus on New York. So New York has been one of the most strict as far as listing coins. So if we can get it through New York, we’re fairly comfortable with the rest of the states.But we also have to get it through the Japanese government as well, because we want to kind of have economies of scale on these things. And the Japanese government is also quite conservative.

So one of the main things we’re looking at is we want something that is not going to be a flash in the pan, you know, it’s only been available for three weeks, or whatever we want real coins that are linked to real projects that are solving real problems. So we don’t list a bunch of coins, like in Japan, I think maybe we’ve got 10. And the US, we have maybe five. We don’t list a lot of coins at all, we will be listing more coins, but we prefer projects that actually add value. It’s not just about providing another trading assets that we can make money off of it. We want to support real projects that have real liquidity that are value to our customers.

Bryce: Yeah, and really build out a defensible business model is kind of the space develops, you know, you guys take the long term approach, whereas a lot of the exchanges do quite the opposite.

Aaron: Yeah, Binance gets skewered all the time for not looking out for their customers and just listing anything. But it’s great that you guys have taken the opposite approach, and really vet things before you list them. So once they’re listed, how do you get liquidity on the platform? So there’s a healthy market to trade on day one?

Joel: Yeah, we’re still trying to figure that out. I mean, I think one of the things is, we do look at daily trading volumes before we list. So the coins we list tend to already have volume behind them before we put them out there. There’s also kind of different customer sets. So if you’re listing a coin for institutional investors, then we’ll go talk to market makers to kind of build out the liquidity in the beginning until it has a natural liquidity itself. On the retail side, it’s a little bit different. So we’re basically just sourcing from whatever liquidity source we’re going to have to provide the coin to the customer. So it’s a little bit different when you talk about retail customers versus institutional exchanges, the exchange definitely we need to talk to market makers. And that’s kind of one of the reasons why I’m interested in this automatic market maker experiment that’s going on and DeFy. If there’s ways to kind of take that and apply it to a centralized exchange environment where maybe it can’t be manipulated, and it doesn’t have the weakness of the oracles, then, you know, that would be something that’d be really nice. And I think that can also be applied into traditional finance as well. But right now, we’re mainly just using traditional market makers.

Bryce: Yeah, no, I think that’s exactly what I would love to kind of hear a little bit more thoughts surrounding that like maybe that was like a true real innovation that DeFy did come out with was these AMM protocols where everybody could kind of pool liquidity together. But could you could you kind of break that down? Because I’m sure a lot of people are listening they they’d love like a 101 on what even the AMM stuff is. And then, yeah, it’s cool to think like, I never even thought that a centralized exchange would kind of risk in that put it in, but you’re right, it would be a really cool new way to do things.

Joel: Yeah, I wouldn’t consider myself an expert on the AMM stuff. But essentially, it’s a swap. So basically, people are incentivized to provide liquidity into a pool. And that pool has a ratio that’s kind of built in that swaps between the assets. So what that does is it provides speed and provide certainty. So because people are incentivized to provide the liquidity, you can scale liquidity faster. And because it’s a formula, you have speed, and in the DeFy world, you know, it’s very difficult to attract liquidity, and is difficult to guarantee that liquidity is going to be there when you want to do it. But by programmatically building that it’s solving one of the problems on the on the defy world. And I think that’s something that will be quite interesting in the centralized world. But the other part of that is, at the end of the day, you’re going to have a program where people know exactly how it’s going to trade, which means it could be manipulated. So we kind of have to watch that space a little bit more.

Aaron: That’s a great answer. One of my favorite things about bitFlyer is the advanced order types that you guys offer. I have literally never seen them anywhere else in crypto. It’s really even hard to find some of that gives you the option for failing stop. But you guys go way beyond that. Can you talk a little bit about some of the unique order types that you guys offer and how they work?

Joel: Yeah, so basically the founder of bitFlyer, Yuzo Kano came from Goldman Sachs. And he partnered with our chief technical officer, Camille Masan [unintelligible], who also came from Goldman Sachs. So from for their perspective, you know, this institutional world was normal. So when they built out the original exchanges, they built that logic for regular investors. And you have to think about in Japan, right? The day trading ethnos is very strong in Japan, I think day trading is bigger in Japan than is in the US.

Bryce: Ichimoku cloud.

Joel: And I mean, like, this is what Watanabe, I mean, it’s huge in Japan day trading. And they’ve done a lot on the FX side. So there’s a little bit, I think, a higher expectation as far as what services you need to offer to be successful in Japan. So they built beyond just your new normal limit orders. Lots of logic where you can kind of have triggers. So if this happens, then trigger another set of logic, which then can trigger another set of logic. So you can have a lot of different scenarios kind of gamed out, so that it will automatically start trading, and you don’t miss the opportunity.

Aaron: Yeah, I was playing around with it yesterday. And it’s almost like you can have like a visual interface for writing your own smart contract, where you set one condition, and then it fills. And then it branches off into two other conditions after that. It’s really amazing where you can map an entire trade from open to close, all in one execution. And I love that, it’s really, really bright.

Joel: Yeah, it really helps when you’re sleeping, and then the Asian markets go crazy.

Aaron: I might actually get a chance to sleep now. So often up trading at 4am. Because that’s when all the volatility is and you know, the other exchanges that I’ve been using before, don’t give me that option. I have to actually be there to pay attention. But I think if I just switch over to bitFlyer I might be able to live a more healthy lifestyle.

Joel: Hey, well, we’ll look after you, man we’ll look after you.

Bryce: Awesome. One of the questions that I had was just like, generally speaking, what are some of the news announcements that have come out? Call it within the last three months? That have you particularly bullish, like in the near term here? The one that comes to mind for me, is the micro strategy announcement. They just announced they double down on their treasury. So now they it’s like one of the first publicly traded companies that holds half a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin on their balance sheet. What do you think’s going on there? And is there anything else, like kind of similar that you’re seeing unfold in the capital markets?

Joel: I think the micro strategy, one was quite big. To have kind of a listed company say that crypto should be part of their normal asset class is as a big deal. I think another big one was JP Morgan, announcing that they’re willing to onboard crypto companies.

Bryce: I saw that one, that one’s going to be big,

Joel: Quite big one. Because, you know, right now, with crypto companies, it’s difficult to build out a lot of the banking relationships, and particularly when you’re a global organization like us, where you have crypto moving at one speed, and then your cash moving at a different speeds, because it’s got to go through international wires, it’s a pain. So to be able to have kind of an international global bank, where you can kind of do internal money transfers between your different entities in different countries, it’s quite helpful in doing cash optimization.

Aaron: That’s amazing. Can you give us retail guys some advice from a veteran in the capital markets game? You know, what are some things that we need to really look out for, to protect ourselves?

Joel: When I look at crypto, right, one of the first questions I asked was, okay, I can see technical trading, but where’s fundamental trading? Where is investing based on the value of the coin itself? And that has not really been built out and is not really clear, I think you’re beginning to see that where people are building trading strategies on kind of milestones of a project, where, you know, they put out their test net, they put out their production net, where they’re beginning to deliver real value. And if you think of the coin, as almost like a stock price, and it’s valuing the project underneath it, it’s an interesting way to think about it.

So for me, that’s a way to think about investing in crypto, where you’re not having to go in and look at a bunch of charts, and which is really psychological investing. Maybe you can do it with momentum investing. That’s another way. You can also just keep with the old standard of, you know, dollar cost averaging. But I like the idea of kind of linking it to milestones and delivering value on the actual project itself. Because at the end of the day, right, just like a company has to build products to survive, to have value, these projects also need to build value and solve real problems, or else they won’t survive. It’s much more Darwinian than stock markets. So it doesn’t have all the vetting, and it doesn’t have the long life. But I think it’s an interesting, interesting way to think about investment.

Aaron: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, our buddy, Josh Frank over at the tie, he just started a podcast, and he’s bringing on a bunch of guests, asking them all the same question. How can we fundamentally value crypto? So maybe somewhere along the way, we can compile an answer that everyone can agree with and go from there?

Joel: Yeah, I think we still have a little bit ways to go on that one. But at least it’s the conversation of.

Aaron: A few 100 episodes.

Joel: Yeah. He’s got a good area to mine there.

Bryce: There’s tons of stuff that he hopefully uncovers here in the near term. Yeah, man, this has been a super fascinating conversation. And we know we want to bring you guys back on as the, as all the developments come with bitFlyer. And I’m sure you know, you guys are going to open up the floodgates here, hopefully to some other projects. And we’re really excited. But I kind of have a couple questions just to get a little bit more color into who you are and stuff. Something we ask everybody that comes on the podcast, but I’m curious, like what other company besides bitFlyer and besides like any, like, actually, like token issuing project, but like what other company in the space that you are really keeping an eye on? Maybe you have some friends over there that are just like, wow, that they’re doing some really impressive stuff. And what is it that they’re doing?

Joel: To be honest, I kind of like to watch the Fintech companies, like revolute and those guys. Robin Hood I’m not too thrilled with I don’t like the way they do things. But I think the Fintech guys are the closest to crossing over between traditional and crypto. So you have to come to the pure play crypto companies. The traditional guys, the Fintech guys have seen the money in crypto, they’re starting to build out some of the rails and they’ve got a much better handle on customer experience, then I think the crypto world does. I don’t think they understand quite the investing yet. And it’s still a bit risky on that. But bringing crypto to the masses, they’re doing a fairly good job, at least with Bitcoin right now. So, you know, those are the guys kind of watching right now.

Bryce: Really solid. And then kind of the last question is just like one other person that you want to give a shout out to that has really made an impact on how you do business or that you think is just really inspiring.

Joel: I guess there would be two, the first one would be my wife. She hates finance, she hates crypto. So it’s very interesting to have conversations with her because she points out all of the stupid assumptions I make about how to make it useful to everyday people. And then I also mentioned kind of in the early days, I worked at IBM back a long time ago when they actually thought about breaking IBM up, right. And that was back in the early 1990s. And there was a guy, Lou Gerstner that came in and basically said, it doesn’t make any sense to break it up. We just need to rethink how we solve customer problems. We’re not selling hardware, we’re building solutions, right?

So that that ability to rethink and one of the things he said was, you have to eat home cooking, right? If you can’t use your own product, you can’t sell it to other people. And that’s one of the things like we’re having a strategy session right now is one of the questions I asked my staff is okay, how do we make sure that we’re always eating home cooking, what are the things that you want, that we need to build to make it exciting to you? And the guys here are all very deep into crypto. And they have like four or five different exchanges and stuff that they’re using, so they know what’s happening out there. So it’s a very good kind of touch point to say, Okay, this is what we need to do to stay relevant to our customers.

Aaron: I love that, that’s so wise. I really love the approach of building solutions. Make building what you want, and building what your community wants, because they’ll tell you, they’ll tell you all the time and feedback. And if you just simply build what the people want, they’ll come and use it. So Joel, thank you so much for spending the last half hour with us. Very, very enlightening. We definitely look forward to having you back again. Really cool. Where can people follow you on Twitter or LinkedIn?

Joel: So on Twitter, I’m bitFlyer Joel. I don’t tweet a lot, but I get out there every once a month. On LinkedIn, just Joel Edgerton.

Bryce: Awesome. Joe, it’s been great man. We’ll talk to you soon.

Joel: Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.

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